The Last Days of Being 15
This week has gone so fast (now who hasn't said that before?). I was going to do the whole count-down thing to my birthday, but there's not much point in starting now if it's only to end tomorrow! lol Yes, tomorrow *bounces* I can't wait. The only part of slightly weary of is when the little boys will come wake me at six in the morning...*tries in vain not to remember the time they pounced right on top of her*
But then comes presents :D I still have absoltuely noooooo idea what I'm getting. This "big" mysterious thing that Mum somehow smuggled through the mail even my Dad doesn't know about. Or so he tells me. For all I know he could have been instructed to pretend innocence. You never know with Mum. And apparently there was this other thing too, that Hannah knew was coming in the mail but she can't recall it ever arriving...? *blinks in confuddlement* Tomorrow...tomorrow...
Y'day we went to town to meet up with this family and also to take Josh in for his physio appointment (he's having growing pain troubles with his back). Anyhow, it's like seven o'clock, we're all in the car wrapped up in old sleeping-bags (why does that word look really weird in writing yet sounds perfectly normal in verbal form?) when Mum turns around and asks, "Hey Lyd, have you chosen what birthday cake you want yet? We need to buy the lollies today."
"Not yet," I say.
"I didn't think so," and so saying, Mum hands our recipe book of birthday cakes down to the little boys to pass back to me.
The thought of what b'day cake I wanted had somehow managed to detour my thoughts until now, so I was flicking through the book with Hannah and Josh: past the pirate head, past the pus in boots, past the mouse on the clock; past the cute pussy cat--wait, pussy cat--I flipped back a page. This had to be it. My latest claim to fame (yes, I do have a lot of claim to fames :P) has been my adoption into the feline world--as in my new found habit of sleeping as much as our cats. I even bought a shirt with a "Felix the Cat" on it when I was in Sydney back in Easter. Tach wouldn't let me leave the shop until I had. lol She was like, "You have to get it! Then you can like have it as the shirt from this time in your life." I was convinced...*grin*
I started (and finished yesterday) the night before last The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. It is such an awesome, awesome book! I read the whole first three quarters in one hit before being able to put it down--and so didn't end up going to bed until four in the morning. Then we left for town at like seven that same morning *roll* But, man...I just had to keep reading. Kept crying here; laughing there; gripping the book held on by suspence on the opposite page.
For those of you who haven't yet read it--for you're just going to have to *pokes those who haven't*--it's the autobiography of these two ladies in Holland and their old father and about how they became the hub of the underground in WWII. Eventually they were caught, and the two of them, Corrie and Betsie, end up in a concentration camp in the middle of Germany. It's just so awe inspiring to learn how God sustained them through the squalor, the horror, and the pain they were forced to live through and how because they let Him, His light shone through them into the very corners of the prison camp.
I've never ever claimed anyone as my hero before, but if I decide to ever have one I'd have to choose Betsie. She's the one person I've been able to fully relate to that I'd want to truly be like. Corrie was the main character and she definitely challenged me, but I think it's 'cause in a lot of ways Betsie is me. Not that I'm anywhere as near to God and so filled with his love as she was (that's where my striving to become like her comes in!), but because if I had been in Holland at the time she was, it was what she did that I would have wanted to do--it was what I could do. She was sick alot like I am; always weak. During the time they were hiding Jews and helping them escape, she was the one who ran the house and she had a real knack for it. How did Corrie put it..."under my hand the house was clean, but under Betsie's it shone."
As much as I'd love to think I could have been like Corrie, being the one organising Jews to places of hiding, and finding out ways to steal ration cards, I don't think it's really where my gifts are. I'd be with Betsie; loving to decorate and handle the house, cooking, and all-round taking care of those temporarily staying in the upper rooms. And then because of her weak body, dying in a concentration camp. That's me. I've read so many war books that I know I don't have the body that would have survived through any kind of time in a concentration camp. I would have lived each day as my last, and then been released not through the wired gate but through the sky.
Continued birthday thought: Only one more night of being fifteen :) Funny how it never feels any different...
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